Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Last Sunday evening, we watched a documentary called “Spirit & Truth: A Film About Worship”.

It was a great time, and we were thrilled to see Dawson Chapel packed to the gills.

We’re planning on doing more things like that, because we’re seeing God bless it in so many ways.

We already have our eye on the next film to show, so stay tuned for that.

Spirit and Truth was a documentary that was concerned with answering the question: “What is true, Christian worship?”

In the documentary, Stephen Nichols referred to John Calvin, the Reformer, and a question he was asked by the Emperor Charles V. The question was essentially this: “What was the point of the Reformation?”

He answered with basically this, “We must worship God in purity.”

This is the title of my sermon, as today we are talking about this very thing—worship.

The Reformation was not the first time God showed his Church how rotten their worship had become — far from it.

In the OT, we think of King Hezekiah and then King Josiah.

Both in their own ways discovered widespread corruption in Israel, and responded first with repentance, and then immediately began reforming.

There also is the story of Nadab and Abihu, who gave an unauthorized sacrifice of incense, contrary to God’s express instructions.

This grave offense was serious enough to God—this failure to worship appropriately—that their lives were required of them.

We might also think of Uzzah, a cart-man for the Ark of the Covenant.

As he and his team were carrying the Ark, an ox stumbled, and the Ark was tipping towards the ground.

Uzzah, presuming that in this instance a violation of God’s command not to touch the Ark would be permissible, reached out to stabilize it.

Immediately, like Aaron’s sons, he was struck dead.

Uzzah’s mistake was to assume the dirt was less holy than he was.

Sproul says, “the dirt was obeying perfectly the commands of God.” Was Uzzah?

These are important lessons to us from the OT on both the holiness of God, and his intense, unchanging focus on pure worship.

I suggest to you that the moment of most significance in the history of the world, as it relates to worship, was the finished work of Jesus Christ tearing the veil between God and man.

We can now enter the Holy of holies.

This makes even the purest form of OT worship seem rotten, in comparison.

So the way to God has been made through Jesus Christ, and he bids us enter in, but we know that God doesn’t change.

We know he cares just as much about how he is worshiped now as he did 4,000 years ago.

Once we’re saved, and our eternity secured, we still have the rest of our lives ahead of us.

We ask,

As Francis Schaeffer put it, “How shall we then live?”

What does God command?

The Problem: As with Josiah, Hezekiah, and in our Lord’s own work, this broken world and the broken people in it have a strong tendency to fall into idolatry.

And this, each and every time, results in disaster.

This is because, as we will see, God is deeply, deeply invested in the worship of his creatures.

A few things to consider.

The Creator God spoke the universe into existence, breathed life into humanity, and remains intimately involved in both.

The Almighty God who whips ‘round a billion, trillion, galaxies of fire and light, is the same God whose gaze penetrates to the deepest recesses of your soul.

God, the judge of all, commands that all creation—and that includes us—bow before his throne.

As he has said since the beginning, in that garden long ago, “I have made you, and I will care for you, and in my presence is fullness of joy.

All that I have made is yours, only obey me in this one matter.

If you do not, you will surely die.”

Thousands of years later, when the Israelites were on the border of the promised land, Moses said to them, “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.

If you obey the commandments of Yahweh your God, by loving Yahweh and walking in his ways, then you shall live… But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish.”

500 years after that, Solomon, at the end of his life, finished Ecclesiastes by saying,

Ecclesiastes 12:13–14 ESV

13 The end of the matter; all has been heard.

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Please open your bibles to Hebrews chapter 12, starting in verse 28.

We will begin here, but reference a number of verses before it, as well, so leave your Bible there for today.

Worship is life-or-death.

It can be, and has been, lethal.

It has the power to renew and give life, and it has the power to incinerate and destroy, for “our God is a consuming fire.”

The entirety of our lives is spent worshiping something!

It’s not a question of whether or not we will worship; the question is what or whom we will worship.

That worship which is unacceptable is consumed by fire.

So, “What worship survives the fire?”

The Ruling Word

Hebrews 12:28–29 ESV

28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.

Prayer

Sermon

Acceptable worship, as God himself tells us here, is four things.

1.

It is Rooted in the Kingdom.

2. It is Regulated by His Word.

3. It is a Reaction to His Glory.

4. It is the Reason for Living.

Part One: Rooted in the Kingdom

Ruling Text: “… receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken…”

The Bible doesn’t speak about worship as something that happens at certain intervals throughout the week, or during certain seasons of the year.

It speaks of worship as an ongoing, constant practice.

Deuteronomy 6:5–9 ESV

5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Psalm 34:1 ESV

1 I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

In Jesus Christ, the Christian has unlimited and immediate access to God.

We can, very literally, worship him all the time.

And, like all of humanity, the Christian will be worshiping all the time—it’s simply a question of who or what.

In Ps 51:12, the psalmist asks God to “restore” to him the “joy of his salvation.”

This is done by “renewing a right spirit” in him.

Question: What are we worshiping?

Are we worshiping God? Do we even want to?

This is a hard question.

Part of the difficulty is that we can’t help but distinguish between “church-y” things and “normal” things.

Our society programs us to think this way.

I’ll explain what I mean this way.

In his book Desiring the Kingdom, James K. A. Smith says this about the shopping mall:

The site is pulsing with pilgrims every day of the week as thousands upon thousands make the pilgrimage.

In order to provide a hospitable environment and absorb the daily arrival of the faithful, the site provides an ocean of parking.

this particular religious site is part of an international, yea “catholic,” network of religious communities

The large glass atriums at the entrances are framed by banners and flags; familiar texts and symbols on the exterior walls help foreign faithful to quickly and easily identify what’s inside

The design of the interior is inviting to an almost excessive degree, sucking us into the enclosed interior spaces, with windows on the ceiling open to the sky but none on the walls open to the surrounding moat of automobiles.

There is a sense of vertical and transcendent openness that at the same time shuts off the clamor and distractions of the outside, boring world

This temple—like countless others now emerging around the world—offers a rich, embodied visual mode of evangelism that attracts us.

At another temple, we are greeted by a welcoming acolyte who offers to shepherd us through the experience, but also has the wisdom to allow us to explore on our own terms

After time spent focused and searching in what the faithful call “the racks,” with our newfound holy object in hand, we proceed to the altar, which is the consummation of worship.

While acolytes and other worship assistants have helped us navigate our experience, behind the altar is the priest who presides over the consummating transaction.